Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The Agony of New Material Introductions

Now
that shrinks of IC feature sizes have begun to reach economic limits,
future functionality improvements in ICs are increasingly derived from
the use of new materials. The Critical Materials Conference 2016 - to be held May 5-6 in Hillsboro, Oregon (cmcfabs.org)
- will explore best practices in the integration of novel materials
into manufacturing. Dr. David Thompson, Senior Director, Center of
Excellence in Chemistry, Applied Materials will present on "Agony in New
Material Introductions - minimizing and correlating variabilities,"
which he was willing to discuss in advance with SemiMD. "We'll review
the challenges we run into after the materials system and chemistries
are set and have been proven generally viable, but still require
significant optimization", said Thompson. Problems with dual-sourcing
will also be revealed, "chemical suppliers protect their knowledge - not
simple IP - but also their sub-supply-chains and proprietary methods of
production, transport and delivery"..."In most cases the initial batch
of any new molecule is made at a scale that would fit in a coffee mug."
For the full article, click here, or attend Session II of the Critical Materials Conference, May 5-6, in Hillsboro, OR, for more details